Taking it easy

Sautéed chicken offers the convenience of one-pan cooking coupled with the pleasure of a tasty dish in itself. It also provides a template upon which to layer flavours, so you can serve meals to suit the mood. Recipes by Jeremy Lee

This week's template dish is designed to make the life of the home cook just a little bit easier. It combines two techniques to a single end.

A fricassee is a fancy name for one-pot cooking. It is usually a dish that is cooked entirely in one frying pan,a sauce made within, in which the meat is basted. To sauté means to place something in a pan and then toss it, the dish being anything from a pancake to a fillet of fish. Combine the two methods, which is roughly what has developed over time, and you have a fairly reasonable idea of what's involved in these recipes.

The ingredients vary but the timing and the theory are pretty much a constant. Once a few simple rules are applied, many variations will present themselves. But I would stress that the simpler ones tend to be easier to make - and taste infinitely better.

All recipes serve six.

Sauté of chicken

For the restaurant, I buy lots of whole chickens, and we generally remove the legs and leave the breasts on the bone, for roasting separately. Granted, there is something quite wonderful about a whole chicken roasting, but really good birds are becoming more and more expensive, and so it seems profligate to roast them.

As a general rule, for home use, I'd buy two whole chickens at a time, set aside the legs for one dish and roast the breasts - no other method really comes close to doing justice to the breast meat.

(This approach has the added benefit of demanding that you do something with the rest of the carcasses - such as making stock for use in a soup or risotto.) That said, for the purposes of this recipe, you will only need the one bird.

1 top-quality, free-range organic chicken

2 tbsp olive oil

50g unsalted butter

Sea salt and black pepper

100ml white wine

100ml chicken stock

Ask an obliging butcher to cut the chicken into eight joints: the two breasts, still on the bone, detached from the carcass and each cut in two, together with the legs and wings.

Heat a wide, heavy-bottomed frying pan and add the butter and oil. Place the chicken pieces skin side down, and cook until the skin becomes crisp and well coloured. Turn the chicken, repeat on the other side, and season generously. After 10 minutes, transfer the breast pieces to a warmed dish, leaving the leg and wing pieces to cook for a further three to four minutes, before transferring these, too, to the dish. Add the white wine to the frying pan and, as it bubbles, scrape the pan with a wooden spoon to lift any residue sticking to the bottom. Pour in the chicken stock, boil for a minute to reduce, then strain over the chicken pieces. Clean the pan, return it to the heat, then tip the chicken and sauce back in the pan. Simmer for another minute and serve.

Sauté of chicken with mushrooms

There was a time when wild mushrooms came in tins, at great expense, from continental Europe. Such was their liquid content that they were tumbled straight from the tin into creamy sauces. (If ever they saw a frying pan, it would have been in the sink with the washing-up.)

How things have changed. The British wariness of mushrooms has abated, and the hunt for them in the wild is on the increase. This is a fine development. On the other hand, the carefully cleaned and packaged mushrooms that are coming in from all over the globe are suspiciously perfect looking - they are just a shade too dry, without the damp and musky smell of woodland that so fills the senses with anticipation. My advice is to track down the real thing, and give yourself a marvellous treat.

The same ingredients as for the sauté of chicken recipe, with the addition of:

200g very good mushrooms (preferably wild), trimmed and cleaned

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 small handful flat-leaf parsley, picked

25g butter

1/2 lemon, juiced

Prepare and fry the chicken as in the previous recipe. Once you have transferred the chicken from the pan to the warmed dish, increase the heat, add the mushrooms and season lightly. If the mushrooms are wild, fry them for a few minutes only, for a little longer if they are cultivated. Add the garlic. Transfer the mushrooms to the dish with the chicken. Increase the heat under the pan, pour in the wine and, stirring all the while, reduce to a tablespoonful. Pour in the stock and, once it is simmering, return the chicken and the mushrooms to the pan, and stir everything. Add the parsley, the last nut of butter and the lemon juice, cook for a further 30 seconds and serve.

Sauté of chicken with shallot, tomato and herbs

This is more famously known as poulet sauté chasseur, a real classic, and was on the menu at The Old Mansion House hotel where I began my career as a chef.

Interestingly, this is one of many dishes that craves a sauce without which chefs, once upon a time, would have died - namely, demi-glace. Few ever made it well, however, and it caused more mouth-lacquering, lip-colouring and general nausea than any other. No domestic cook in their right mind would even consider making it, not least as it involves cooking a pot of half veal stock/half 'Espagnole' sauce on top of the stove for three days, then passing it through a sieve, and reducing that for a further day or so to the right consistency. Only once you'd done all that would you be ready to make the rest of this dish.

Instead, I'd recommend you make this sauté with a very good stock, which, when added to a dish with a little butter swirled in, graces, flavours and enhances the ingredients without knocking all sense of balance for six.

The same ingredients as for the preceding recipe, with the addition of:

3 shallots, finely chopped

2 very good tomatoes, blanched, peeled, de-seeded, roughly chopped

1 tbsp cognac

1 small sprig each fresh tarragon and chervil, leaves picked and finely chopped

Cook the chicken as in the preceding two recipes, and once it has been removed from the pan, add the shallots and fry until softened. Then proceed with the mushrooms as above. Before adding the wine, pour in the cognac and boil away until almost completely reduced. Now add the wine and stock as before. Finally, add the tomato and herbs, and taste to see if the seasoning requires correcting. Add the chicken and mushrooms, simmer for a minute more, then serve swiftly.

Chicken with tarragon

In my book, this manner of cooking chicken is utterly delicious. Although fresh tarragon is at its best in summer, you could slightly bend the laws of seasonal cooking and acquire some from further afield during the colder months. Whether you add any cream to the finished sauce is entirely up to you - the dish is as delicious with or without, soit is of little import.

The same ingredients as for the sauté of chicken recipe, with the addition of:

1 tbsp cognac

1 tbsp tarragon leaves, chopped

1 small garlic clove

1/2 lemon, juiced

4 tbsp whipping cream (optional)

Follow the first recipe up to the removal of the chicken from the pan. Pour the cognac into the pan, and let it bubble away until almost evaporated. Add the garlic, then continue as in the first recipe. Just before serving, add the lemon juice, tarragon and cream (if using). Simmer for 15 seconds, stir well and serve immediately